[Medication error management climate and perception for system use according to construction of medication error...

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to examine current status of IT-based medication error prevention system construction and the relationships among system construction, medication error management climate and perception for system use.

The participants were 124 patient safety chief managers working for 124 hospitals with over 300 beds in Korea. The characteristics of the participants, construction status and perception of systems (electric pharmacopoeia, electric drug dosage calculation system, computer-based patient safety reporting and bar-code system) and medication error management climate were measured in this study. The data were collected between June and August 2011. Descriptive statistics, partial Pearson correlation and MANCOVA were used for data analysis.

Electric pharmacopoeia were constructed in 67.7% of participating hospitals, computer-based patient safety reporting systems were constructed in 50.8%, electric drug dosage calculation systems were in use in 32.3%. Bar-code systems showed up the lowest construction rate at 16.1% of Korean hospitals. Higher rates of construction of IT-based medication error prevention systems resulted in greater safety and a more positive error management climate prevailed.

The supportive strategies for improving perception for use of IT-based systems would add to system construction, and positive error management climate would be more easily promoted.